The Call is Coming from Inside the House
What is the call is coming from inside the house?
Sit down, kids, and let us fandom olds tell you how phones used to work, because that’s where this trope comes from. Back in the day, houses had phone numbers, and every phone in the house used the same number. So if your mom was on the phone in the kitchen and you picked it up in the living room, you’d be able to hear her talking on the other end. These were also the days before caller ID was really a widespread thing, which is why so many characters in old horror movies pick up unknown numbers. They were all unknown. These truths of phone communication led to the common trope of finding out that an unknown call was, in fact, coming from inside your own home.
And yes, we know what you’re thinking. You can’t call your own number, right? Actually, you could back in the day, but only sometimes. It was unclear why exactly it was allowed to happen, and the mystery was never really solved, but whatever. It worked. Some houses also had more than one phone number, and once cell phones became a thing, you could easily call someone from inside the house using one. Basically, it’s meant to be super scary, because you thought you were safe, and suddenly you’re not.
Why is this trope popular?
This trope became very popular in horror movies because it meant that a confrontation between a victim or hero and the killer was imminent. Previously, perhaps the victim or hero had thought they were safe, and they have to very quickly come to terms with the fact that this is not the case. It also shows the power of the killer. They have invaded the victim or hero’s private space, which makes them even more terrifying. It also generally ties up the line so that the victim or hero can’t call for help, which means that they have to take matters into their own hands.
What are some examples of this trope?
This trope was first used in the horror movie Black Christmas in 1974, in which a killer hides in the attic of a sorority house and slowly kills all of the women who live there. It was also the basis for the entire plot of the 1979 horror movie When a Stranger Calls. A babysitter receives a call to check on the children, but ignores it as a prank. However, the calls continue in frequency and become more threatening, so she calls the police. It is eventually revealed that the calls are coming from inside the house, and that the intruder murdered the children before they even started.
Our personal favorite use of this trope,though, is from the popular movie franchise Scream. The first was released in 1996, and phone calls were a very big part of the plot. While the killers did use cell phones, and caller ID was more common by this time, it wasn’t unusual for people to still answer their phones. The scene that kicks it all off, with Drew Barrymore starring as the lead momentarily, is a particularly good example of this trope. However, the phone angle really kind of falls apart eventually, especially in Scream 4, which features teenagers answering unknown numbers on their cell phones in 2011, when people had definitely stopped doing that.
How do you use this trope in your own writing?
All you really need to do to use this trope is have the villain be inside the house when the victim or hero thinks he is literally anywhere else. You don’t even have to use the element of phones anymore if you don’t want to, especially since phone communication has changed so much since this trope became popular.